Mukherjee traces human understanding of cancer from earliest recorded history to the present day. A mixture of epidemiology, sociology, history, bio textbook and personal stories should be a disjointed mess, but instead it's a nearly perfectly cohesive "biography" of cancer. I'm astonished at how ambitious Mukherjee was--and how successful. I want do re-read this someday, to refresh my memory of all the interesting tidbits and theories he shares.